Tuesday, September 12, 2017

CAN'T YOU JUST FEEL THE BIPARTISANSHIP OF OUR EXTREMELY INDEPENDENT PRESIDENT?

President Donald Trump plans an aggressive travel schedule, taking him to as many as 13 states over the next seven weeks, to sell the idea of a tax overhaul as the administration tries to avoid repeating the communications failures of its attempt to repeal Obamacare....

The strategy was revealed by top advisers to about 40 allies during a closed-door meeting last week. It calls for the president to visit states he won where a Democratic senator is up for re-election next year, including Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, said three people who attended.

Yes, that's what you do if you're "bound to no party" because you are, "in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system." That's what you do if you're "unbound by ideology and untethered by party allegiances": You plan a trip in which you go from key midterm state to key midterm state making speeches to an adoring base, all the while saying to officeholders from the opposing party, "Nice Senate seat you got there. Shame if something happened to it."

Yeah, that's really post-partisan.

It's true that Trump previewed this strategy on a recent trip to North Dakota; the state's Democratic senator, Heidi Heitkamp, jumped on the Trump Train. The president also recently traveled to Missouri, where another vulnerable Democrat, Claire McCaskill, is up for reelection. Unlike Heitkamp, McCaskill didn't accompany the president or endorse his plan.

Trump is strong-arming Democrats on the tax plan. The plan will be a Republican plan. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi aren't going to make significant contribution to it. This is happening because -- say it with me, boys and girls -- Donald Trump is a Republican.